Chusok Lunch with Park Jung Sun's Family

Last Monday was a national holiday because of Chusok (Harvest Moon Festival) the day before. Our K-friend Park Jung Sun invited us to do something (we weren't sure what before hand because we can't communicate very well in either language) at 11:00. She showed up with her grandmother, sister, niece and nephew, the last three who had lived in Vancouver for a couple of years, and so could communicate with us!

In our parking lot, we did introductions, grandma (who didn't live in Canada) said "Nice to meechuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu" and laughed and laughed and laughed, we gave them some pears, and we had a lengthy discussion about what foods we liked. They decided something and off we went to get lunch, except that, being a big holiday everything was closed. So after a half hour driving around Samcheok, we went 6km up the coast to the slightly larger town of Donghae, where they had heard a restaurant that would be good for us vegetarians would be open.

The restaurant was good for us, and it was good. The theme of the place had something to do with mineral water and dolsot (the hot stone pots). The lunch we were served was amazing:

[Click on the picture to get a better view of what we were served.] That's a fish, a whole pike, I'm working on with my chopsticks there, and it really is hard work. (We're really more pescaterian than vegetarian.)

We were served rice (cooked with yams, pine nuts and a jujube) in little hot stone pots. After scooping the rice into a bowl, we poured hot water into the pots, covered them and set them aside. After the meal we went back to those pots, which then had hot water and rice that was simultaneously mushy and crispy coming off the sides. We drank the water and ate the crispy-mushy rice. It was delicious, and apparently good for health and digestion. We were also served some sort of cinnamon tea, with a single pine nut floating in the middle of each cup, that tasted incredibly good.

After lunch we were asked if we wanted to go shopping. I told them I was excited to go to E Mart (the biggest department store within an hour of our apartment). So we walked around town for a while:



We shopped for shoes for the kids and went "eye shopping" in the fancy Nike store and took lots of pictures:





We eventually went to E Mart, by which time everyone was pretty frazzled from trying to communicate across the language barrier, so we went shopping separately (and found cashews and unsweetened yogurt!), but not before Park Jung Sun, who is something of artist, took some arty shots:





It's always a treat to get to hang out with Koreans (especially since they have to struggle to speak our language, even though we are guests in their land). to get to hang out with a grandmother and a whole family and go to such a neat, traditional restaurant was really extra special. Happy Chusok everyone.

Dinner, Communication & Korean Manners

As we were leaving school yesterday, one of the teachers, who we've taken to calling “The Matriarch,” said to us, "7:00, my house, meeting." "Tonight?" "Yae. Park Jung Sun... your aparte... (Konglish [a mutant language made up of words taken from English and made to suit the Korean tongue] for apartment) go." "Uh, okay."

So we get home just before six and complain to each other for a bit about being told without notice what we're doing, not having any control over our lives and in general how easily exhausted we are these days. Then, being hungry five hours after our lunch of rice, potatoes and kimchi, we ran down to the neighborhood restaurant for some bibimbap before our meeting. We rushed back to our apartment and were picked up at 7 by our friend Park Jung Sun, her “mother, English Teacher, Samcheok Elementary School” and about seven small children, three of whom I was to sit with in the back of Park Jung Sun's little Hyundai.

After a quick nightmare fantasy about how we were going to be made to have conversation with these kids, we dropped them off on the way to The Matriarch's aparte, where we found spread before us a full-on feast, laid out beautifully across a traditional Korean table (6" legs, for floor sitting). Koreans, like, it seems, everyone outside the US, know how to treat guests. There were five dolsot bibimbap (hot-stone pot rice and vegetables), doenjang jigae (a soybean paste stew), kimbap (Korean sushi), fried pumpkin slices, all kinds of steamed veggies and kimchis... basically all our favorite Korean foods. Unfortunately, we had gotten snarled in a language trap earlier.

When we were parting ways with the Matriarch after school, Melanie asked “should we have dinner at our apartment?” The Matriarch can understand slow, classroom English, but not so much “everyday English”. I'm guessing she heard “dinner”, thought about the fact that she was about to prepare a massive feast for us, and so said “yes”. When I saw what she had done, I wanted to cry. We had just been kvetching about how how inconsiderate everyone is toward us, and here was a feast, vegetarian none-the-less, made just for us.

We met the Matriarch's husband, a Math Professor, sat down, tried to explain, she apologized, we apologized a lot, Park Jung Sun called her cousin that speaks more English and had him translate “you can leave food remaining”, I put some more bibimbap and doenjang jigae into my already very full belly, and we toasted over very sweet wine (Manashevitz style). They didn't eat much beyond the bibimbap, as Korean politeness dictates, and we felt terrible. Melanie's eyes watered periodically through dinner.

Once the intensive eating part had passed though, it was a great evening. They brought over a second table, filled with peaches with pink-marbled flesh, grapes, miniature bananas and Gyeongju Bread (pancakes filled with sweet bean paste), a specialty of the husband's hometown and ancient capital of the peninsula. We talked about whatever we could find the language for, looked at pictures of their kids, took pictures of ourselves (are they prouder to have western friends or are we prouder to have Korean friends?) and watched some baseball.

***digression warning***

Korean baseball takes sponsorship to a whole new level... where in the US teams are identified more less equally by their home town and a name, in Korea they are identified primarily by the company that sponsors them, secondarily by a name (always English), and almost not-at-all by the city they play in. So the game last night was Samsung vs. KIA. My favorite team is the Lotte Giants, because they are also “Giants”, because they play in Busan, my first home in Korea, and because Lotte makes these delicious chocolate-covered pretzel cookies called Peppero. As another example of the extent of corporate reach in Korea, November 11 is “Peppero Day” (Peppero are long and strait, hence 11/11), for which every child in the country buys cases of the cookies and gives them to their teachers and friends. Last time I was here I had a cabinet full of Peppero that lasted me well into spring. It's kind of like another Valentine's Day, except that they have two of those in the spring, but we'll get to that in time...

***end digression***

The husband took out an atlas and showed us around Korea, and then a newspaper, and we looked through the news together -- my favorite! We talked about AIG and the strength of the Korean market (three words – massive dollar reserves), what we thought of “Faline... uh, Alaska... woman...” I've been told over and over not to get into politics with Koreans, so I tried to tone-down my response as much as possible, but I seem to have a condition that prohibits me not expressing my social/political opinions. The most I could water it down, in simple English, was “I don't think she can be President.” When that was met with silence I remembered that they strongly identify as Christians and started wondering how much favor I had just lost.

All and all, it was a lovely evening. We were sent home with a massive amount of food (“Gift... Korean culture.”) and a determination to simplify our English even further when anything logistical is on the line.

This afternoon, The Matriarch pulled me aside in the hallway, apologized and said in perfectly polished English, "we would like to have you over for dinner again."

Assa! (Awesome!)

More Meetings, More (Meaty) Meals

Last night we had a "meeting" at the Samcheok County Office of Education. We went with a teacher and two administrators from our school, and when we got there discovered banners reading "EPIK Conference 2008 - September 17, 2008 (Wed) 16:00". I've never before been to a conference that was identified by its time!

After being brought on stage and given roses (our second presentation of flowers from government), we sat in a big hall for ninety minutes with all the other foreign teachers in the county (and multiple handlers for each) while our contracts were read in Korean. I suppose it's good that the administration was forced to get familiar with the contracts, but wow was that a long ninety minutes.

I suppose as a reward for sitting quietly, we were then all (100+ people) taken to a restaurant for bulgogi - the famous Korean beef dish. Melanie and I are vegetarian, or almost so, and this was the second time we've sat at a table with the administrators while they eat meat and we eat rice. It feels like they're starting to resent us for it, but I suppose it's more likely just alienation. After dinner I was thinking about my pre-vegetarian days and the few occasions when I ate with vegetarians. I remember not making any effort to understand where they were coming from. I remember feeling like they were "soft". And I definitely remember feeling like they were different - out-group, if you will. And so it is here, by refusing the school lunches and the group dinners, we've alienated ourselves and excluded ourselves from the group, to whatever additional extent is possible from the starting point of being, literally, an alien.

On the upside, a Korean teacher overheard our boss talking, in Korean, about us not eating meat, and recommended to us a vegetarian restaurant here in Samcheok. It's called Cheongralae, and they serve Ssambap - rice and vegetables and fish wrapped in lettuce. I guess it's a locally famous restaurant. He even left the dinner table to get us business cards for the place. Seven days till payday, and then we'll definitely check it out.

Coming soon: book reviews. I've been meaning to review (and compare and contrast) Jarod Diamond's Collapse, Derrick Jensen'sThe Culture of Make Believe and Kalle Lasn's Culture Jam - three books about what's wrong with our society and what we need to heal - for some time now. And I've just finished Jonathan Safran Foer's excellent novel Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close, which definitely deserves a review. I had a dream last night that I was recommending books to my Aunt Ann - Derrick Jensen and Arundhati Roy. Perhaps I'm looking to push a certain perspective. See yesterday's post for a fleshing out of one aspect of what that perspective is.

Vegetarian Mis-adventures in Korea-land

We had our first big vegetarian failure in Korea tonight with the Tuesday Night Eating Club. We went to a Chinese restaurant downtown and foolishly thought that with the help of a Korean-American friend who is nearly fluent in Korean we'd be able to find or order dishes without beef, pork, chicken, dog, fish, crustaceans, cephalopods or any other animal, but that turned out to be too much to ask. We thought we'd try the yachae bokumbap (vegetable fried rice), and u dong (thick noodle soup).

Here's the u dong. Notice the tentacle in Melanie's chopsticks.

Several minutes into trying to suck down some of the noodles Melanie pulled a full prawn out - eyes and whiskers and all. We tried to keep putting it down for a bit, but it just wasn't happening.

The bokumbap looked more hopeful, and tasted great, until Melanie got something chewy and we realized there was beef in the black bean sauce. You'd never guess from looking at it would you? There's a lesson in there for vegetarians in Korea.

So we left a little nauseous and more than a little disappointed that we paid ~US$10 to get that way. On the way home I picked up the always reliable economic assistance kimbap and an asian pear and am feeling grateful for them both now.

What I'm Eating, Vol. 1

It's been a few days since I've posted, mostly due to the fact that the wireless I've been freeloading off of disappeared for a couple of days, but also in part to a severe lack of energy at the end of our first week at school. So I feel like I owe you one or two. I thought I'd offer a post on what is sure to be an oft-recurring theme, and one of my favorites - what I'm eating! The food here, though often challenging for a Boulderite, grown acustumed to easy access to organic, vegetarian cuisine, is one of the highlights of the culture. Perhaps that's true everywhere, but I've talked to plenty of foreigners who have taught here and had little good to say about the place, but that they love the food.

I've started taking my camera with me whenever I go out, to catch the oddities that always catch me off guard here, and also to document what I'm eating. I've also stolen a copy of the menu from our amazing neighborhood kimbap place and started to decode it. Kimbap is like veggie sushi - rice, veggies, egg, and usually ham (none the vegetarians, thanks) - and it's all over the place here. The reason I call the restaurant a kimbap place despite the fact that they offer about 50 different dishes is that kimbap requires a special setup, a place for the rolling to happen. A roll of kimbap cost 1,000 won (about US$1) last time I was here, but seems to have gotten a little more expensive... as has, I guess, all food all over the world in the last 24 months.

As I've started going through that copy of the neighborhood restaurant's menu, trying to figure out what each thing is and if it's possible to be made vegetarian, I came upon one that was tough to decode. 원조김밥 (wonjo kimbap). Looking wonjo up in my trusty Korean-English dictionary gave me these two definitions:
1) the founder, the originator
2) help, support, assistance, aid ... economic (financial, food) aid
Looking at the price list, I noticed it is 1,000 won, making it the cheapest item on the menu. So I'm calling it "economic assistance kimbap". Nice of the restaurant to help out those of us that can't afford the real deal, isn't it!? Anyway, after that, of course, I couldn't resist ordering it, and the usual 야채김밥(yachae - vegetable) kimbap, to compare. Here are the results of that experiment:

Seems just a mushroom and a shisho leaf that are missing, though the ham that we order the other kimbap without may not have been included in the economic assistance version either.

For lunch today, we had those two rolls and my all-time favorite korean dish, 돌솥 비빔밥 (dolsot bibimbop - mixed vegetables and rice in a hot stone pot). Here's what that looks like as served:

And then as it's meant to be eaten, mixed together with 고추장 (gochujang - hot chili pepper paste), and the rest of our table.

In Korea, you might order one dish each, or at the nicer places communal dishes for as many people as are eating, and you get all these side dishes for free with them. Here, we each have a slightly spicy broth, which we get each time at this restaurant, and then on the left a plate of three side dishes which change every time we go in. This time they were, from left to right, a savory eggplant and carrot mix; a concoction that could only show up in Korea - fruit, yogurt and ham; and kimchi, which is always present in one form or another. That's what Melanie has got in her chopsticks. I couldn't stand kimchi when I was first here, but I've come to tollerate it... at a meal like this (when no Korean whose opinion of me I care about is watching), I might have two or three pieces like that. It's fermented so it's good for the belly. If a Korean I'd like to impress is watching, as at lunch at school most days, I can eat that whole portion without complaint. I imagine soon I'll come to actually enjoy it. I'm almost there.

Yesterday we went to the same place for lunch (I imagine we'll patronise them hundreds of times this year. That would barely allow us the opportunity to try everything on the menu once, and frankly, with that whole table full of food above for about US$6, why not?), and since I was feeling sick, I went for a hot bowl of noodle soup. This is 칼국수 (kalguksu - thick noodles soup), and it was perfect for my sinuses.

Melanie ordered 비빔라면 (bibim ramyeon - mixed vegetable noodle soup), and got something much too spicy for her taste.

That big red patch in the middle is gochujang, chili paste, and it's what makes Korean food so spicy. It proved tough to scoop out of that bowl. Which meant I got two lunches. ;)

More to come on food soon, I'm sure, as frankly, it's my favorite.